Quirinus van Dongen (the father of John van Dongen, the Minister of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, the ministry that governs the SPCA), knows whereof he speaks. He just won in court against the SPCA's seizure of his animals. http://www.animaladvocates.com/cgi-bin/admin.pl/read/7751.

Q.C.'s brother, John van Dongen senior, the uncle of John van Dongen the Minister, visited the farm on Tuesday the 2nd of February, and the pigs were all still alive. So 300 pigs were not immediately euthanized as the SPCA press release says it ordered. "A large number of the piglets had to be euthanized."

AAS talked today with the farm owners, Sharon and Guy Nesbitt, who told us that the SPCA only said that 3 or 4 ought to be killed. They haven't been. The Nesbitts say the pigs are not sick. Anyway, nothing has been done immediately, unless you call ten days immediately.

Guy Nesbitt phoned the clinic of the SPCA's point vet, Dr Steinbach (who has been mentioned in these pages before, more on that below), and told the clinic's receptionist that his pig had the sniffles. He was told, "We don't really do pigs", and to phone another vet. So that is the SPCA's "pig expert".

The SPCA came back to do another inspection on February 1st. The Nesbitts had CITY TV there to video-tape the farm and the pigs to use as evidence in a court case. In fact CITY TV has been to the Nesbitts farm twice. The media are starting to figure out where the real story is.

The SPCA also delivered the six horses and one donkey back to the Nesbitts on the 1st, after it had seized them, putting healthy animals through unspeakable distress for ten days, on the grounds that the shelter was not adequate. But it said that the horses and the donkey were healthy...so since they were not suffering from the lack of shelter, why couldn't they have been left in their familiar surroundings while the shelter was improved if it needed improvement, something Guy Nesbitt denies?

Leaving the horses and the donkey would have been putting the animals' welfare first, before good TV footage and the $1375.00 the Nesbitts had to pay the SPCA to get their animals back. The math is simple, and we quote a vet who has had experiences of the SPCA...No seizure -- no money.

Instead, the SPCA terrifies the animals it seizes, trucks them long distances in stifling hot trucks, frequently neglects them to death or to a state of illness and then demands money before it will give them back. To many people, including many vets, animals appear to be chips in a poker game the SPCA plays.

The shelter was a 30' x 60' tent with 6 box stalls in it. But the horses preferred to shelter in a large grove of trees. Of course they would, that is how nature intended they shelter. What healthy horse would chose confinement in a box stall over the company of its herd, under the trees, free to move around, not forced to stand in one place for 12 hours at a time, if it was given the choice? Understanding that is real animal welfare. But if the SPCA thinks that only stalls are adequate shelter, then why doesn't it take on the owners of the Douglas Lake Ranch where 7,000 cows, 400 bulls, and hundreds of horses live and shelter freely?

The SPCA's trucker rolled up with the horses and the donkey and demanded $75.00 cash or he wouldn't deliver the animals.

"Sadly many of the animals were in critical condition and had to be euthanized immediately to relieve their suffering," says Senior Animal Protection Officer Eileen Drever. What many? The Nesbitts told us that the SPCA only killed the pig that was lying in a mud puddle. We don't know if that pig was suffering as Drever says, or having a good time as the Nesbitts say, but we have to question how sad it could make anyone who has killed thousands of healthy animals, many of them simply for not being sold fast enough.

The SPCA's only mandate is to do what is best for animals. Trucking healthy, and especially, sick animals, is not best for animals. But it is best for the SPCA.